The same mechanisms that dampen virality also make both intentional misinformation and unintentional spreading of false rumors just about impossible to squash here.
I first really noticed it when fedi networks widely distributed the baseless assertion that a tech exec a lot of people (correctly imo) dislike is a known sexual harasser.
It's a real problem that is exacting a price right now, today, via swarms of abusive sent toward fedi admins and developers for things they didn't even do.
If the next few months here look anything like the past few days, I would be shocked not to see a substantial exodus of good people, both devs/mods and regular users who follow admin conversations.
@vruba @kissane My elected mastodon representative handles this stuff for me